Florian Illies, Shamelessly Jumping on Angrist & Pischke's Train

Good books both.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 106

1. The importance of being able to enjoy the mundane (Ben Casnocha)

2. "Nonshared environment" might best be conceived of as noise, not environment, says Kevin Mitchell.

3. External validity alert: Are patients in medical trials selected for large treatment effects? (Andrew Gelman/Paul Alper)

4. Chris Bertram makes a surprisingly good case for the argument "Squeezing the rich is good: even when it raises no money".

5. "Is there no racial bias precisely because it seems like there is?" Ole Rogeberg takes us into the mind of the microeconomist.

6. The fun of being criticized for doing the right thing, namely keeping the normative and the positive apart (Bryan Caplan)

7. An argument against men attending childbirth (Dennis Mangan) (via)

8. 50 great book covers from 2013, collected by Dan Wagstaff (via)

9. The low-hanging fruit of immigration: Bryan Caplan offers another metaphor.

10. The argument that extremely high cognitive talent is specific. (Bruce Charlton)

11. The argument for being an asshole (Scott Adams)

12. What's it like to hear voices that aren't there? (Christian Jarrett/L. Holt and A. Tickle)

13. Which works did sociologists cite most in 2013? (Neal Caren)

Pebbles, Vol. 45

1. Disagreement about the effects of violent video games on aggression (Michael Venables)

2. Vielleicht wäre die angemessene Antwort: "Überweisen Sie mir doch 500 Euro, ohne dass ich etwas für Sie tue." (Harald Martenstein)

3. How science is not like faith (Jerry Coyne)

4. Apparently, the case against "too much choice" is not solid (contains link to meta-analysis) (Matt Ridley).

5. "Since the end of 2007, police in the UK have run a secret network of fully-furnished fake apartments and townhouses, solely for the purpose of capturing local burglary suspects" (Geoff Manaugh).

6. Short research article: Evidence against the hypothesis that red sports clothing causes winning (Thomas V. Pollet and Leonard S. Peperkoorn). If I read that correctly, though, assignment is not random.

7. 15 types of movie posters (Houke de Kwant). Arguably, this is a rational business strategy. If you have a way of signaling "This is an action movie with lots of explosions", that's what you should do. After all, posters are marketing devices first.

8. Health advertising: The Corman strategy; the "cute hypocrite" strategy.

9. Another good illustration of how hard it is to do social science research; nominal question: is stop and frisk effective? (Benjamin Wallace-Wells)

10. "10 highly embarrassing photos of visitors freaking out in an Ontario haunted house" (National Post)

11. Syntax is hard: A tublr dedicated to data visualizations gone beautifully wrong (via)

12. Correlates of polygamy in Africa (James Fenske) (via)

13. "12 Unusually Placed Sports Venues"

14. "We suggest that a psychoanalytic approach based on conflict/compromise model put forward by Freud, then articulated by Brenner, and unconscious group functioning models integrated with Keynes’s psychologically minded views can provide a framework towards explaining the recent housing bubble" (Şule Özler). You read the paper so I don't have to.

Paging Fritz Heider

Meine Ehre heißt miau: Nazis with cats (via).

Around the Blogs, Vol. 102

1. The experiment Milgram chose not to publish (Tom Bartlett/Gina Perry) (via)

2. Disagreement on the bellicosity of stateless societies (Larry Arnhart)

3. Velvet glove, iron fist, or: How government force works. (Bryan Caplan)

4. The "forced rider problem" and disutility from "public goods" (Eric Crampton). Useful concept!

5. The view that TV shapes people's thinking by not mentioning aspects of topics (Steve Sailer/NOTA)

6. Why people dislike photos of themselves: Mirrors meet the mere exposure effect (Robert T. Gonzales). But don't miss the link in the last paragraph.

7. 26 great words from the OED (Carolyn Kellogg/Ammon Shea)

8. Differences in preferences for competitiveness as an explanation of the male-female wage gap (John List and Uri Gneezy)

9. "This must be the strangest publicity still ever taken." (Sherbrooke)

10. Three by Tim Harford: Why pro-free-market arguments don't work well for finance; banks are relying less on leverage; how to use e-mail efficiently at work.

11. Paging Quetelet: Why song lenghts are not normally distributed (Gabriel Rossman) (via)

12. People respond to incentives, giving to the poor edition (Eric Crampton/Jillian Keenan)

13. Feelings of extreme bliss produced by targeted brain stimulation (Christian Jarrett/Fabienne Picard, Didier Scavarda, and Fabrice Bartolomei). Gimme, gimme, gimme!

14. Why wages don't fall during recessions (Bryan Caplan/Truman Bewley)

15. How to make voters better informed (Bryan Caplan)

16. Another bonkers graphic presented by Kaiser Fung.

17. The impact on wages of: height; smoking; testosterone (Economic Logician/Petri Böckerman and Jari Vainiomäki/Julie Hotchkiss and Melinda Pitts/Anne Gielen, Jessica Holmes and Caitlin Myers).

Pebbles, Vol. 43

1. "The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant". And: A timeline of NSA domestic spying; also: Bruce Schneier on why whistleblowers are needed. Und: Bespitzelung in den USA und Deutschland.

2. Orson Scott Card on four types of stories.

3. Interview with a two-handed climate scientist (via)

4. Epigenetics and the dissimilarities between "identical" twins.

5. The first issue of the open-source Journal of Causal Inference is out. (via)

6. Photographs of poor New Yorkers in the 1890s.

7. Ein Grund, nicht die SPD zu wählen.

8. There's a beetle named in hounour of Hitler. Not to be confused with the bug that looks like Hitler. Or the goldfish that looks like Hitler. Or the house that looks like Hitler. 

9. When love disappears.

10. Merton's concept of ritualism illustrated (via)

11. The technical trends of the 2012-13 football season

Pebbles, Vol. 42

Rolf Dobelli explains why you shouldn't follow the news.

Arnold Kling makes the argument that states are better than clans.

"A founder of the anti-GM food movement on how he got it wrong: Mark Lynas in conversation with Charlie Gillis"

Naughty logos (mildly NSFW) (via)

Preface and Chapter 1 (Abraham Lincoln) of Edward Jay Epstein’s book, Annals of Unsolved Crime (via). Don't be put off by the trashy graphics.

Paris in 1900 vs. 2013 photos (via)

Startup ideas that looked stupid but weren't (via)

Small island problems (via)

New journal called Porn Studies founded. Sounds interesting, but the Call for Papers/Mission Statement suggests it's some cultural studies crap.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 94

1. Deontic or consequentialist ethics? Bayesianism! (Eric Raymond)

2. How to keep your brain clean (Bryan Caplan)

3. Are learning styles a myth? (Mo Costandi)

4. 11 rules for critical thinking (Maria Popova/Peter A. Sturrock)

5. Bonkers infographics (Adam Obeng) (via)

Pebbles, Vol. 41

1. What was it like to be Vladimir Nabokov's research assistant? (Edward Jay Epstein) (via)

2. Ist Gewalt gegen Polizisten wirklich angestiegen? (Friederike Haupt) (HT: Christian)

3. "Accused of being gay, Spanish priest challenges Church to measure his anus" (Barry Duke)

4. The history of Pulp Fiction (Mark Seal) (via)

5. Pictures of the old main library of Cincinnati:

Pebbles, Vol. 40

1. Are Greenpeace et al. responsible for the death of eight million children? (Bjørn Lomborg)

2. The very low external validity of social science experiments (Jim Manzi)

3. An academic review of high-quality studies estimating the effect of police on crime (Jonathan Klick and Alexander Tabarrok)

4. Software programs for diagnosis (Katie Hafner)

5. Michael Chabon reads Finnegans Wake.

6. The rare xkcd foray into the humanities is a highlight. Bonus: The Aumann impossibility theorem.

7. Wives appear careful not to outearn their husbands (C.O./Marianne Bertrand, Emir Kamenica and Jessica Pan).

8. The famous "Broken Windows" article by George Kelling and James Wilson is back online.

9. An essay on memory by Oliver Sacks (via) (A good read, but contains nothing new if you have a fair grasp of the research literature)

10. Jonah Lehrer: Mistakes were made (by me).

11. "World's craziest freekick?" (video)

12. Earning money the hard way (video) (Cory Jones)

13. "13 Book Covers You Won't Believe Are Real" (Lauren Passell)

Fun with Stanley Kubrick

Classic movies in minature style (via)

Fake 2001 ads (via)

More Kubrick humour here.

Pebbles, Vol. 39: Fingers 'n' Pipes

1. Rushdie remembers the Rushdie affair

2. Knuckle cracking does not lead to arthritis (n=2) (via).

3. Evidence that the unconscious can work on math problems (via)

4. Popular science book cover of the year

5. Cool photos of Google's data centre

Around the Blogs, Vol. 87

1. Taking evolution seriously (David Friedman)

2. External validity as an intralevel interaction problem (Jim Manzi)

3. Football's top ten lumberjacks (Alex Bourouf)

Around the Blogs, Vol. 77: Fun & Numbers

1. It appears Pauline Kael was not as ignorant about sampling as is commonly stated. (Charles Murray)

2. Germans out-Germaning themselves (Davin O'Dwyer)

3. The world's most informative pie chart, brought to us by Kaiser Fung. The whole blog's quite infotaining, if this is your type of thing.

4. DIYization fosters innovation (Seth Roberts). You could build a research programme on this idea.

5. Fun fact about WWII (Greg Chochran)

Around the Blogs, Vol 74: Stamps and Trees and Memories

1. Eric S. Raymond taxonomizes anti-intellectualism. Self-recommending, as they say.

2. Will Wilkinson reflects on the Occupy movement. Not sure I agree, but the post is excellently written. In fact, I have an inkling Wilkinson wasn't so sure he agreed with himself and hence took extra care with the wording.

3. A blog on football-themed stamps. Thank you, internet!

4. Seth Roberts goes to Tokyo.

5. Eric Crampton knows the solution to unemployment.

6. How long does it take schemas to distort your memories? Not very.

7. Keith Humphreys speculates on why self-involved people are overrepresented in the arts. Too much treatment, too little selection for my taste, but still. (via)

8. Tim Harford explains that government employees may create value, too.

The Best Blog Posts of 2011

Eagerly awaited by all of the world wide web, here is the list of the best blog posts of 2011. For your convenience, brackets are appended to each link to indicate that the post is Long, Medium lenght or Short; High-Brow, Mid-Brow or Low Brow and Funny or Not.

If I counted correctly, economists take only four spots in the list below, which is much of an improvement over last time. This includes the two authors we met on last year's list. Which is still available, as is the 2009 edition. Without further ado -

15. Orgtheory: "Your ASA Vegas Bingo Card", by Kieran Healy (S; MB; F)

14. Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine: "Advertisement", by H. Albertus Boli (S; LB; F)

13. Dalrock: "Should I Divorce Him?", by Dalrock (L; LB; F)

12. Eli Dourado: "Peace through Political Assassination?", by Eli Dourado (M; MB; N)

11. Decision Science News: "Five Books That Changed a Statistician", by Dan Goldstein (M; MB; F)

10. Core Economics: "English Language Requirements for Immigration", by Joshua Gans (L; LB; F)

9. kenodoxia: "What Ancient Greek Philosophy Was Not Like . . .", by James Warren (S; HB; F)

8. EconLog: "The Overlords of Immigration", by Bryan Caplan (M; HB; N)

7. PJ Media:"The Myth of the ‘Ethical Vegan’", by Ward Clark (L; MB; N)

6. Overcoming Bias: "Why Men Are Bad at 'Feelings'", by Robin Hanson (M; HB; N)

5. Forbes: "The Moral Default Setting: Liberal or Conservative?", by Will Wilkinson (L; HB; N)

4. Less Wrong: "Working Hurts Less Than Procrastinating, We Fear the Twinge of Starting", by Elizer Yudkowsky (L; MB; N)

3. Armed and Dangerous: "What 'Privilege' Means to Me", by Eric S. Raymond (M; HB; N)

2. [Companion Pieces:] Pileus: "Cheap Sex as Collective Action Failure", by Sven Wilson and Armed and Dangerous: "Reconsidering Sexual Repression", by Eric S. Raymond (M; MB; N)

1. iSteve: "Racehorse Haynes", by Steve Sailer (L; LB; F)

Soon you'll die: time rushes by

Strange scenes caught by Google Street View (may contain violent and/or sexual content). Have a great week!

Around the Blogs, Vol. 71

1. If you care about animals, does that mean you should go vegan? (Ward Clark)

2. Speculation about a causal connection between eating trends and violence trends (Phil Lees) (via)

3. Questions concerning AGW (Aretae)

4. Axes of evil (funny) (Grant Snider)

5. The sociology of learning behavioural genetics (Gregory Cochran)

6. Mental health and happiness: not as much of a connection as one might think (Christian Jarrett)

7. The theory-driven way of developing theory (Bruce Charlton)

8. OWS protester has a good point (some lady)

As usual, but this time especially, apologies to the people whose pointers I forgot to bookmark!

Around the Blogs, Vol. 66

1. Kieran Healy's 2011 ASA (in Vegas!) Bingo. I especially liked F5, but you probably have to know your sociology to appreciate it fully.

2. Fun with films and posters: 2001; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

3. The wisdom of Krauts.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 65: Sneering, Snickering and General Bemusement

1. "Racehorse Haynes" (Steve Sailer explains why, if you absolutely must get killed, you shouldn't do it in the U.S.A.)

2. "The question was to describe a job that I believed helped the world and to explain why I thought that. Of course, my first thought was 'well, not your job because this is clearly a waste time in some broad sense.'" (Joshua Gans, Australian, takes an English language test so he can immigrate to Canada) (via)

3. "Should I Divorce Him?" (Dalrock studies the female psyche) (via)

4. "What does this graph convey? It doesn’t tell us much about phone calls, but it does tell us that some people can make colored maps with lots of lines. It also tells us that someone has a bunch of telephone call data." (Andrew Gelman has another one of those graphs)

5. Do skeptics complain about the right things? (José Silva develops a signaling theory) (via)